L’usage de la langue maternelle dans les cours de français : Le cas de deux classes de collège au Liban (secteur public, secteur privé)

Abstract

A study was conducted at two EB7 French language classes in a public and a private school in Lebanon to understand through class observation the role that the mother tongue plays in the teaching of oral communications skills. Although the Lebanese curricular guidelines advise the avoidance of dialectal or standard Arabic in French language classes, our class observation revealed situations of code-switching. In fact, we noticed that the teacher in the public school frequently resorted to dialectal Arabic, deeming it necessary as her learners had linguistic weaknesses. In parallel, the teacher in the private school refused to use the Lebanese dialect but frequently used Lebanese mono-terms. As for learners, they incorporated Lebanese words in their French sentences or composed their whole sentences in dialectal Arabic. Their main goal was to seek information or make sure they understood. It seemed that the two teachers are not aware of the importance of multlingualism as a didactic concept. The article will thus pinpoint the urge to complement the training of teachers with a contextualized reflection on their representations of multilingualism and an initiation to the didactic of multilingualism.